Here’s the trick. If you let those weeds overgrow your garden, that garden won’t nourish you.

If you pay attention to those weeds, you can not only fertilize your garden, you can actually harvest those repetitive, initially troublesome thoughts.

How? Keep a diary, write those thoughts down.

And nothing helps you keep an effective diary than great books that help you change negative thoughts to positive ones.

Here are eight of the best ones that have saved my mental and emotional life again and again. They’re like guides who carry torches in the scary darkness of your head so you can turn on the lights, keep them on, and transform your inner house.

Joan Borysenko, Minding the Body, Mending the Mind. This book combines physiological insights concerning the “relaxation response” with perspective on the components of your personality, especially the ego and its role.

Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness. This book is an outstanding bridge to the healing insights of Buddhism, brought home to the reader through terrific composites.

John Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are. In a series of short pieces, the author provides the healthiest way to position your mind to avoid, withstand, and manage the stress of everyday life.

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. This inspiring testament by a survivor of a death camp is a shows the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable horror.

Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. Miller’s account of the effects of poor parenting and the insights around the child’s coping mechanisms, sadness, and healing is a terrific addition to any self-help library.

David E. Burns, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy: This book brings the art of the internal “Talk Back” to new heights.

Tara Bennett-Goldman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart. Goleman’s work on the unhealthy “schema” that emotionally damaged individuals put together is a valuable contribution to the field.

Eckart Tolle: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Toll’s work’s insistence on acceptance of the immediate present provides a useful perspective.

These Books Provide Medicine, but You’re Still the Doctor.

If you read these books, and while these are the most meaningful to me, certainly you can find other outstanding ones, that’s just the start. Read books like this, then do the following:

• Accept the Fact that You CAN Take Charge of Your Thoughts
• Become an Observer Rather than a Critic of Your Thoughts
• NOTE the Thoughts That Recur the Most
• Open a Dialogue with YOURSELF

A diary is a tool that helps you do all these things. Each of these books provides a multitude of insights that you can put to use right away as you write down what you see, what you feel, what thoughts you have, and what connections your heart, your mind, your spirit, and the various voices inside you can make.

Each of your internal voices represents a narrative, a story inside you about yourself and your place as human being as well as human doing.

If you observe rather than criticize your thoughts, no matter what they are, you transform useless weeds into something of information, self-awareness, nourishment, and future fertilization.

The Mind Is Your Garden-Tend It Well!

So, next time you want to simply throw your head away, because it’s negative, so negative that you feel you just can’t find something good to hold on to, STOP.

Sit down, take a deep breath, and simply WATCH YOUR MIND and what’s in it.

That’s the beginning.

The, get some of these books, note what you’re thinking, and write the story of your life, every day.

Don’t rip up the weeds, use them to make the garden of your inner world something that will feed you all the days of your life.

Lars Nielsen is a free-lance copywriter whose unique and image-rich selling voice combines the narrative power of his poetry, playwriting, fiction, radio, liturgy, and comedy. Go to www.larsnielsencopywriting.com and see how Ultimate Influence Copywriting can reframe the narrative of your business, speeches, ideas, and your life for success.